Assessment of a Robot Design: A novel Methodology using Eye-tracking and Semantic Associations Among undergraduate students´ contexts

Robots are increasingly being used in different industries, so product design education must be familiar with such contexts. Specifically, in the medical and nursing sectors, robots perform duties to enhance patients' physiological and emotional health. This paper focuses on showing the methodology designed by professors and design students for the assessment of robot design for medical purposes. The objective of this work is to demonstrate the advantages of the methodology that integrates two main assessment tools: the semantic differential (SD) questionnaire and Eye-Tracking (ET) technology. These tools were applied to deepen the assessment of specific morphological elements of the robot body, as well as emotional descriptive elements of a previously evaluated robot. The research protocol was applied among undergraduate students from a Mexican and a Japanese university. First, a survey on robot-related aptitude and previous experience was conducted. Second, an SD tool based on the Goodspeed index, along with ET technology using high-quality renders of the robot, was implemented. The findings of the methodology application demonstrated the novelty of the procedure and its outcomes. The survey on previous experience showed a similarity between the students of the two universities, indicating a baseline experience with SD and ET regarding variables such as emotional perception and visual element observation. The students exhibited similarities in most of the outcomes, both in terms of the understanding of emotional and physical elements observed.